Edwin Nicholson's Year 3 Animation Blog

FAIRY BREAD PRODUCTIONS  Week(s) Commencing:  20th  March - 27th March 2021 Editing HOD:  Edwin Nicholson Crew: (TBA) Summary: This Editing Report is for the test shot composition.  My role in the test shot was to see how the shot composition could be made in Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere.  The first thing to do is to upload the image sequences from .zip files to Premiere. In the test shots case, I had to Image Sequence:  Betty Body with animated lighting  Betty Arms with animated lighting  Fork Animation  Light Matte  Background Render  Table with Alpha Render  After the sequences were created, I synchronized up the shots and then compose them all in After Effects.  Because the 3D shot here already had depth when they were rendered with 3D camera movement, I did not need to put the scene in 3D space. The fork was an individual piece to the character so I needed to key frame the tip of the fork to the finger ...

 In this Final test Shot I was given the Image Sequences of these entities: Betty Body with animated lighting Betty Arms with animated lighting Light Matte Fork Background Render Table With Alpha Render I imported all of these into Adobe Premiere to compile all of the photos into a full video sequence. I then took the Premiere clips and took them to compose in After Effects This is what After Effects looks like after all of the editing and compositions. So what I have done for this render was layer all the shots on top of each other. Because the 3D shot here already had depth when they were rendered with 3D camera movement, I didn't need to put the scene in 3D space. The fork was an individual piece to the character so I needed to key frame the tip of the fork to the finger other wise it would look off. With the torso, table and fish I have placed a drop shadow on them to give them depth. A neat thing about drop shadows is you can match the colours of the shadows with the scenes. W...

On the 23rd of March we got taught what we have to do for research for his project as blogs are now more important to do that the years prior. We looked at a concept trailers for Wolfwalkers, an animated film storyboarded by Iker Maidagan. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5198068/ We also covered storyboarding. According to https://www.creativebloq.com/advice/storyboard-tips these are the 17 essential tips for storyboard. 1. It's all about telling the story 2. Build on the line of action 3. One drawing equals one idea 4. Draw cleanly for animation 5. Find clarity in silhouettes 6. Communicate the story through character poses 7. Think like an actor 8. Use the frame as the 'eye' 9. Sketch thumbnails for a simple panel 10. Establish the point of view with the horizon line/eye line  11. Use grids to help with object placement 12. Create rough storyboard panel 13. Clean up the storyboard 14. Ensure continuity 15. Consider film time and editing 16. Compose for movement 17. Think abo...

FAIRY BREAD PRODUCTIONS  Week(s) Commencing: 1st March - 20th March 2021 VFX HOD: Edwin Nicholson Crew: Ian Jenkins, Vinnie Webb, Becca Akersten Summary: This report covers 3 weeks of VFX work and R&D. In the first week I wanted to learn the best way to do water simulations. The scenes in mind for the water sims were the following: Slight bathroom overflow at the beginning Slow water rising in the restaurant. Rough water rising in the restaurant. Splashing into the restaurant bathroom. At first I was aiming for every scene using particle based water sims as the water would interreact with 3d surfaces. As later into R&D this would turn out to be the wrong way to go. My team started off looking for as many tutorials as we could find. Below is every water tutorial documented so far in APA formatting. References for Water Simulations 3D Tinkerer. (2020, December 17). Learn Blender's NEW Water Physics in 6 minutes! (Blender 2.9+) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watc...

https://thedisinsider.com/2020/06/23/pixar-animation-studios-begins-animation-on-their-untitled-2022-film/ At the start of class we watched some Pixar shorts on how Pixar works. We watched a Pixar short on how an animated camera works. It was a good reminder on how cameras effect the world you are animating. Just want too add I know the show is designed for kids but the narrator for the shorts was a bit too much. Anyway we also watched a storyboard Pixar short. They discussed how storyboards are made and how that translates to an animation.  Scripts and storyboards are designed to be changed throughout the production process, usually you have 3 years to do that. However we have 3 months. So we would have fit time in the pipeline to do that if we wanted to work like Pixar. Next was a character creation Pixar short. According to this short, character animations is like humans breeding dogs. (Weird way of putting it but that what the short seemed to be insinuating.)We make the charact...

Today we got a chance to hear from the CEO of Auckland Geo A.R. Games for an internship opportunities. Their specialty is Augmented Reality games. Their focus is Governments and City Councils. Their games show health, safety and history. They want to be inclusive to people with disabilities. Inspired game include, Ingress, Pokémon Go. The game base similar to capture the flag. Games are designed to add adrenaline. There games are designed to be Gender Neutral. Magical Park is a game is an AR game which is designed to make kids aware of pollution and climate change. The game is focused for kids at the ages of 6 and 12. This is the backbone for the new project. These guys want physics in their games to make the experience more interactive. Inspired by Josephs Machines, they want to make a game which you can fix an interact with a big machine in a park. (Rube Goldberg Machine). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg_machine Valve business structure it the same as Geo A.R. This link s...

On Sunday 7th the writing team along with Melissa Bustamante started another meeting to discuss multiple thing including Characters Backstory and the story again. Bean and Zara had done some background character development the day before and presented their drafts to us. Zara had focused on Pavo and Bean Focused on Betty. In summary: Pavo is a 35 year old Risk and Compliance Analysis worker who has made himself an introvert. He's essentially lived a quiet life for most of his life and has never been one for companionship till now. He's very paranoid and always believes that everything will go wrong. Betty is 31 year old Taxidermist who has PHD's. She was born in the Philippines. She like Pavo has trouble connecting with people.  The proposal has more details attached, I thought for the sake of the blog a quick summary would do. After character development was discussed we went on the story and started adding and swapping out more details to the story.  This meeting went on...

My Early Logline Ideas: A young man is anxious for a relationship gets a date, will he succeed or will his internal world take over? A young lad takes a dive into the dating scene, Will he drown or learn how to float? A fish out of water goes for a swim in the dating scene, but is it is a little more surreal than what he expected? A man has an internal struggle with himself before going out on an event of a lifetime, a first date. How will it go? Will he contain it, or will it engulf him.

 On Friday 5th we presented the first official draft of what we had to the class. The class responded to it well. So now as a class we went through the script beats and we started breaking them down. This was what was written: This discussion would prompt another writers meeting to be held on Sunday 7th as we definitely needed to work on it to be strong enough for the treatment. Also we needed to write more about the characters as we mainly focused on the visuals rather than the deeper story.

On Thursday 4th, Me, Zara Samuel, Max Candy, Bean Casey and Vinnie Webb started to discuss the script. This would be the first of many meetings on the writing. For this meeting we started going through the notes that we had from the pitch. Also in his meeting I thought it would be a good idea to draw a character arc graph to help us understand the progression of the main character Pavo. Below is the refined version of that graph which I made up after the meeting: The meeting went well. We worked on it for about 2 hours, and we managed to start tying it down. This is only he beginning of the process so there is still more fine details to pan out. On Friday the 5th we will show the class what we have got so far.  

As of Tuesday the 2nd of March we have finalised the roles. Here are the head roles for the project: Producer: Zeta-Rose Aldridge Director: Max Candy Production Designer: Melissa Bustamante Head Writer: Zara Samuel 2D Technical Advisor: Rach Snowden 3D Technical Advisor: Sarah Kaiser VFX Supervisor: Edwin Nicholson HOD of Editing: Edwin Nicholson HOD of Audio: Zara Samuel HOD of Marketing: Bella Ranstead and Bean Casey Treasurer: Thomas George Secretary: Zeta Rose Aldridge Here are the rest of the roles for the project: Writing Team: Zara Samuel, Max Candy, Bean Casey, Vinnie Webb, Edwin Nicholson Character Artists: Bella Ranstead, Rach Snowden, Emma Mitchell, Melissa Bustamante Environment Artists: Corrie Du Preez, Sarah Kaiser, Becca Akersten, Vinnie Webb, Ian Jenkins Asset Artists: Corrie Du Preez, Sarah Kaiser, Becca Akersten, Vinnie Webb, Ian Jenkins, Rach Snowden Storyboard/Animatic: Corrie Du Preez, Zeta-Rose Aldridge, Bella Ranstead Key-frame Animation: Mel...

On the 2nd of March, each member of the class presented no more than 1 minutes on what roles they wanted in the group project.  The most important roles that needed a spotlight during this time was Producer and Director/ For Producer we had Zeta-Rose Aldridge and Rach Snowden For Director we had Corrie Du Preez and Max Candy On the 3rd we would vote on who we would want for these roles. For the other roles they would be solidified in a student meeting on the 3rd. Anyway I went for VFX Supervisor/Director. I was the only one going for it so I got the role. I still presented to the class and showed my showreel. I also responded to questions asked to me. Overall it was great seeing everyone's showreels and their interest. I'm glad that we are all talented individuals.

 This is a Logo concept I came up with for the Company. I used Zeta-Rose's font from one of her concept arts (I did ask permission to use the font). and placed it on my rendition of some bread. This is Zetas Concept below. Below is a reference photo I took for the logo. A frozen Piece of bread, yummo.

We looked at the planning sheets for two prior films including an older group project, Jacqui Bree's year 3 student film Blister and Skin  and last years Year 3 project Bye Bye Bear . Content that we would need to be aware in the proposal include: Title Logo About the company Mission Vision Values The Team Directors Statement Writers Treatment Concept Art Characters Designs Environment Designs Production Timeline Marketing Schedule Potential funding places ILT New Zealand Film Commission SIT Southland Art Society Invercargill City Council (Creative Communities Invercargill) Film Otago Southland

On Wednesday our producer held a meeting to finalise our production name and get the ball rolling on the project. The final vote we selected was Fairy Bread productions! This vote included names such as: After the vote we discussed what the identity of our company would be, This is what I wrote: Company Mission Identity At Fairy Bread productions we aim to entertain and create a tasty piece of media. We are a group of individuals who have come together like hundred of thousands on buttery bread to make something special. In our team we have ranges from Animators, Gamers, and Film to produce a piece or work that evokes a sense of joy like the feeling sinking your taste buds into freshly made fairy bread. We all had a go writing one and we ended up voting on a quote from Thomas which went: "Exploring the shared troubles of life with a slice of wonder and a sprinkle of fun." Short and sweet.